Apple is launching its first new product category since AirPods and Apple Watch and is giving us once again a masterclass in tasteful and impactful advertising.

Let's examine its first ads and see what we can learn.

Get Ready

Today, Apple released its first TV ad for Vision Pro, its new Virtual/Augmented Reality Goggles. The ads drop just five days before Apple begins taking pre-orders for February 1 delivery.

Titled, “Get Ready,” the ad features a series of iconic film clips of characters donning glasses, goggles, or other eyewear. Here it is:

Let’s unpack some of what makes this ad so effective.

1. Teases the Product

The first two opening seconds of the spot jolt the audience with an emphatic, “Get Ready!”

The clip features Dr. Frankenstein, from the original black and white film, as he’s about to wake his monster.

Then the guitar solo from Devo’s “Uncontrollable Urge” enters and provides the high-energy backing track for the rest of the spot. Whatever is coming, it’s going to be exciting.

The ad then continues in a series of famous film clips featuring well-known live action and cartoon characters, from Iron Man and Doc from Back to the Future to SpongeBob and Snoopy putting on glasses, visors, helmets, and masks.

The immediate message? Get ready—something is coming. And it’s something you wear over your eyes.

This approach is reminiscent of what Apple did 17 years ago to announce the coming launch of iPhone. In a spot it titled “Hello,” Apple showed nearly 50 clips of famous scenes where TV and movie characters picked up the phone to say, “Hello.”

Like “Hello,” “Get Ready” ends with a tease that tells the audience what to get ready for (Vision Pro). Because “Hello” was running for months prior to the launch of iPhone, it also had a date (“Coming in June.”) Presumably “Get Ready” will run long after the small batch of initial shipments of Vision Pro.

If all this ad did was to grab the attention of an audience watching something else on TV and introduce them the fact that Apple is launching some sort of VR goggle, it would contribute mightily to the launch of Apple’s Vision Pro. But it does far more. Let’s unpack some of what this ad accomplishes strategically.

2. Normalizes Placing Something On/Over Your Eyes

One of the biggest barriers Apple will face to making Vision Pro the computing platform of the future is the potential awkwardness of wearing VR goggles. As amazing as they are to experience, you can’t help but notice that the goggles look dorky, cumbersome, and close you off from the rest of the world.

This is where the first 2/3rds of the ad are especially brilliant. By featuring more than a dozen clips of famous characters in famous scenes putting on glasses, masks, helmets, etc., Apple reminds us that we didn’t flinch when we saw those characters put something over their eyes.

The message is clear. We don’t remember those movie scenes as “that goggle scene”—we just accept the goggles as a natural part of their reality. And when you use your Vision Pro, that’s exactly how others are going to react to you.

3. Promises Super-Hero-Like Transformation

For most the film clips in the spot, the only sound we hear is the backing track. But there are two clips that feature sound, and together, those clips gesture at a powerful message.

Seconds 10-12 show Obi-Wan Kenobi starting to train Luke Skywalker. Obi-Wan places a helmet on Luke’s head and says, “Let go your conscious self. Act on instinct.”

In the context of this ad, we’re being nudged to not think too hard about this. Vision Pro isn’t something you need to work hard to figure out. It’s something you can use “on instinct.”

Later, the spot features a clip from Back to the Future. Doc is in the Delorian Time Machine with Marty McFly and as he pulls down his goggles, he declares, “Roads? Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!”

In the context of this ad, Apple is telling us that Vision Pro isn’t exactly like anything you’re familiar with. Yes, Doc’s Time Machine looks like a car—but it’s capabilities make it something entirely new, something transformational.

The surrounding clips reinforce this message of transformation.

Many of them show the moment when a character transforms from their ordinary reality to become something greater. Iron Man is just Tony Stark until he’s enclosed in his suit. Snoopy is just a loveable dog, until his goggles transform him into the Red Baron.

It’s hard to escape the implication: perhaps Vision Pro will do for you what goggles did for them and transport you out of your ordinary world and give you superpowers.

4. Demonstrates and Demystifies the Product

If all Apple’s “Get Ready” ad did was prepare the audience for Vision Pro, make it look cool, and defang the biggest objection to them—these are bound to look dorky, aren’t they?—then it would be better than 99% of the television ads that run in a given year. And it would sell a lot more product than most “branding” ads do too.

What’s amazing, however, is that Apple has actually managed to combine two different kinds of ads into one.

The first is a brand-forward, let’s make this new product look cool, kind of ad. And it does that job incredibly well.

But 20 seconds in, it transitions into a second kind of ad, one that is incredibly powerful for introducing new products and overcoming key questions about it. Of course the kind of ad I‘m referring to is a “how to” or “product demonstration” style ad.

While it’s filmed as one continuous shot, you can break Apple’s demonstration of Vision Pro down into four separate scenes:

• Placing the goggles. Woman, multi-cultural, not a tech bro. At home, in her living room.

• Setting the Scene: camera moves around the woman as she places the goggles on her head, showing her in profile, then zooming in from behind so we start to see the room as she sees it. As she pulls the goggles over her face the camera zooms into the goggle so we’re looking through it. We’ve shifted from third-person to first-person perspective. Which prepares us for…

• Reality through the Vision Pro: We see what the woman is seeing through the googles. The room looks just like the room she was in. Even though the goggles are covering her eyes, she’s still in her reality. And it’s incredibly life like.

• Augmented Reality: The goggles are on and in augmented reality mode. We see app icons animate up and become superimposed over the room as we hear a reassuring bong, not unlike the start sound when you power up your Mac. Woah! This is something both familiar (from the ubiquitous phone launch screen) and yet revolutionary—the apps we know and love are coming to life and entering our 3D world.

What will you do in this new reality? How will it change your relationship with your digital world? What new powers are you about to acquire that you will in a short time take for granted just as you now take for granted the superpowers your iPhone has given you?

Apple can leave those answers to the imagination. It has primed you. You’re ready. That amazing futur—and you have no doubt it’s going to be amazing—that’s for you to create. But one thing is sure: where we’re going, you don’t need any roads.

In Conclusion

Apple‘s “Get Ready” ad is a 30-second masterclass in how to introduce a new product for the masses.

Strategically, every ad needs to a) grab the audience’s attention, b) reward that attention with a message that nudges them closer to being prepared to buy, and c) call the audience to action by showing them what/how to buy.

The Frankenstein clip and shift into high-energy music hook the audience. We’ve discussed above how the messaging introduces and promotes the product. And the end card leaves no doubt on how to buy: go to your nearest Apple Store and ask for VisionPro.

The carefully selected film clips, backing track, and messaging also go a long way to creating an emotional resonance between the audience and Vision Pro. I don’t know about you, but 30 minutes after seeing “Get Ready” for the first time, I can’t shake a vague high-energy excitement when I think about Vision Pro, and I’m not someone who is especially geeked about the product announcement or its $3,500 price tag.

But to accomplish all that while also demystifying what the product is in a way the average consumer is likely to understand? We would all do well to learn from what Apple has achieved in this ad.